which he and his ancestors claimed for themselves. . . . On the great object which now centres in me the applauses of such various and even contradictory denominations of citizens, I do own to you the very rock which founds my cathedral is less immovable than my purpose to liberate this high-mettled nation from the petulant and rapacious oligarchy which plunder and insult it.'1 It was not, however, merely on the Presbyterians that the Bishop relied. One of his leading and most distinctive notions was to bring the Catholic body into active politics, by claiming for them the elective franchise and by inducing them to agitate for it themselves. At the meeting of Dungannon the question was already brought forward, but it was laid aside on account of the strenuous opposition of the friends of Charlemont. From this time, however, it entered into the programme of the more democratic party, and overtures to the Roman Catholics emanating for the most part from Presbyterian sources became frequent.3 The proposal to hold a volunteer convention in Dublin excited the keenest alarm. It was, in effect, to set up at the doors of the legal Parliament, and at a time when that Parliament was sitting, a rival representative body emanating from and supported by an armed force, and convened for the express purpose of directing or intimidating the Legislature of the nation. Fox wrote with great emphasis, that if such a body were suffered to continue, above all if the smallest concession were made in obedience to its mandates, the freedom of Ireland would be at an end; her boasted Constitution would be replaced by a Government as purely military as that of the Prætorian Guards; demand would follow demand, and complete anarchy would be the inevitable end. At the same time it was almost impossible to prevent the Convention from meeting. The upper classes looked indeed with alarm on the new movement, but the yeomanry of the North were enthusiastic in its favour. Precedents had been established within the last few years, that made it very difficult to condemn it as illegal, and the volunteers had Mant's Church History of Ire land, ii 692-694. 100. Hardy's Life of Charlemont, ii. See an example of this in the Freeman's Journal, Nov. 20-22, 1783, VOL. VI. which Lord Northington sent to England. Fox to Northington, Nov. 1, 1783. Fox to Burgoyne, Nov. 7, 1783. Grattan's Life, iii. 106–116. Ꮓ assumed such a position that it was almost impossible to repress them. They were a great and disciplined army comprising all that was best in the Protestant population of Ireland. They had been three times thanked by Parliament. The address of the two Houses of Parliament in 1782 had been carried to the Castle between two lines of volunteers. A succession of Lord-Lieutenants had courted and eulogised them at a time when they were actually interfering in politics, and the Renunciation Act which had just been carried in England was mainly attributed to their influence. To prevent them from now meeting in convention would in the opinion of the Lord-Lieutenant be dangerous, or impossible. Charlemont was confronted with that question which under different forms and names has constantly pressed upon Irish politicians. All the information from the North showed that it would be perfectly futile to oppose the meeting of the Convention. He had, as we have seen, tried at the outset to limit its functions to that of petitioning for parliamentary reform; but it was extremely doubtful whether the advice would be taken. The question he had to decide was whether he ought to take part in the Convention or to stand aloof from it. In the one case he would countenance and participate in a proceeding which he regarded as dangerous and unconstitutional. In the other case it was tolerably certain that the whole management of the Convention, it was possible that the whole direction of the volunteer force, would fall into the hands of demagogues of the most dangerous type. Charlemont determined to accept the first alternative, to propose himself, and to induce others of the leading gentry connected with the movement to propose themselves, as candidates for election in the Convention. He has himself stated his motives with great candour. Though I never cordially approved of the meeting, yet, as I found it impossible to withstand the general impulse towards it, . . I did not choose to exert myself against it, especially as there was cause to fear my exertions would be fruitless, and if so might prevent my being useful towards moderating and guiding those measures which I could not with efficiency oppose, and directing that torrent which might otherwise have swept down all before it. I had ... upon mature consideration determined that to render the assembly as respectable as possible was the next best mode to the entire prevention of it.'1 The efforts of Charlemont were in a great degree successful. The Convention, he says, formed 'a truly respectable body of gentlemen, for though some of the lower classes had been delegated, by far the majority were men of rank and fortune, and many of them members of Parliament, Lords and Commons.' Among the delegates were Charlemont, Flood, and the Bishop of Derry.2 The Bishop did everything in his power, to aggravate by his conduct the dissension between the Convention and Parliament. He was now accustomed to go about, escorted by a troop of volunteer light cavalry enrolled and commanded by his nephew, George Robert Fitzgerald, a man who about three years later was hanged for a very aggravated murder, and whose history had been already a strange illustration of the utter lawlessness prevailing in some sections of Irish life. He was the son of a gentleman of considerable fortune in the wildest parts of Mayo. His mother, Lady Mary Hervey, once maid of honour to the Princess Amelia, and sister to three successive Earls of Bristol, had been compelled by the gross ill-usage of her husband to seek a separate maintenance, and became in later life a prominent figure in the early Evangelical movement, and an intimate friend of Venn and of Fletcher of Madeley.3 George Robert, their eldest son, was educated at Eton; he connected himself by marriage with the great families of Leinster and Conolly; travelled on the Continent, was presented at the French Court, wrote both prose and verse with some grace, and concealed under the appearance of a well-bred, polished, and almost effeminate gentleman, a character reckless and savage to the very verge of insanity. He was soon noted as one of the best shots, one of the most desperate duellists, and one of the most arrogant bullies in the West, and a crowd of stories are told of the savage animosity and the brutal insults with which he pursued his enemies, and of the terror which he excited in the wild 1 Hardy's Life of Charlemont, ii. 106. 2 Ibid. ii. 106. Life of the Countess of Huntingdon, ii. 194, 195. country in which he lived. Among many other strange freaks, he was accustomed to hunt the fox in the deadest hours of the night, to the terror of the superstitious peasantry, who, as the chase swept by and as the red gleam of the torches flashed through the darkness, imagined that hell had broken loose and that demon hunters were infesting the land. In consequence of a fierce family quarrel he seized upon his father and kept him for five months in strict confinement in his house at Rockfield, under the guard of 200 or 300 ruffians who followed his fortunes, and many of whom had escaped from gaol. Cannon were mounted around the house; all communications were cut off; although the younger brother obtained without difficulty a writ, the sheriff did not dare to execute it, and, at last, when the assizes were being held at Castlebar, George Robert Fitzgerald appeared of his own accord in the court house, and calmly took his place among the grand jurors of the county. The audacity of the proceeding, however, proved too great. The younger brother was present, and at his request the judge ordered the arrest of Fitzgerald, who was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to three years' imprisonment and to a heavy fine. As was generally expected, he did not lie long in prison. Pistols were conveyed to him. He soon in broad daylight escaped, returned to Rockfield, which lay about three miles from Castlebar, and caused the cannon which defended his house to be fired several times in honour of his release. The younger brother urged upon the sheriff the necessity of executing the writ, but was informed that without the assistance of regular troops such an enterprise was hopeless, and Fitzgerald not only remained at large, but exercised a general terrorism over the whole country. He soon, however, by his own reckless imprudence, fell within the grasp of the law. About three weeks after his escape from Castlebar he ventured to Dublin in the company of his father, and was there, by the instrumentality of his brother, and on the information of his father, arrested and committed to prison. He obtained a writ of error, but the King's Bench affirmed his sentence, and he lay in confinement for more than eighteen months, when bad health, and influence in high quarters, procured his release. At the end of March 1783, the Attorney-General recommended him for pardon. He appears to have speedily gone to his uncle at Derry, and to have thrown himself actively into volunteering, and in May 1784, little more than a year after his release from prison, through the influence of the Bishop, he was presented with the freedom of the city of Londonderry." Accompanied by the troop of dragoons commanded by this singular personage, the Bishop of Derry entered Dublin in November 1783 in royal state. Dressed entirely in purple, with diamond knee and shoe buckles, and with long gold tassels hanging from his white gloves, he sat in an open landau drawn by six noble horses caparisoned with purple ribands. The dragoons rode on each side of his carriage, which proceeded slowly through the different streets amid the cheers of a large crowd till it arrived at the door of the Parliament House, where a halt was called, and a loud blast of trumpets startled the assembled members. Several wholly ignorant of the cause of the tumult flocked from curiosity to the door, and the Bishop. saluted them with royal dignity. The volunteers presented arms; the bands played the Volunteer March; and then, with a defiant blast of trumpets, the procession proceeded on its way. The Bishop was highly elated. He imagined that he would be elected president of the Convention, and he appears to have entertained a real design of heading a rebellion. "We must have blood, my lord, we must have blood!' he once exclaimed to Lord Charlemont.3 See the memorial of Charles Lionel Fitzgerald to the Earl of Carlisle (Sept. 24, 1781), and the letter of G. R. Fitzgerald to the same, Jan. 26, 1781, Irish State Paper Office. Two of Fitzgerald's letters from prison are preserved in the miscellaneous correspondence, Irish State Paper Office; and his very curious memorial to the Government in 1783, and the opinion of the AttorneyGeneral upon it, will be found in the Irish Record Office, Entries of Civil Petitions. See also The Case of G. R. Fitzgerald, impartially considered, with Anecdotes of his Life (1786); A Letter to the Right Hon. W. Eden, by a Member of the Rockfield Legion commanded by G. R. Fitzgerald; and a curious life of Fitzgerald published in 1786. 2 Mant's History of the Irish Church, ii. 693. 3 Hardy's Life of Charlemont. Barrington's Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, ccvii. xix. Fitzgibbon, many years later, in reviewing this period of Irish history, while speaking of the extreme danger to Government of such a military Convention as that of 1782, made the following remarkable admission: In that Convention I will venture to say there was not a single rebel; there was not a member of it who would not willingly have shed his blood in the defence of his Sovereign and of the Constitution.'-Speech of Earl of Clare, February 19, 1798 (Dublin, 1798), p. 80. believe this was certainly not true of the Bishop of Derry. |